The Black Dahlia

Ramona broke the silence. “What are you going to do?”

I couldn’t look at her. “I don’t know.”

“Martha mustn’t know.”

“You told me that already.”

The guy in the ad was starting to look like an idealized Emmett—the Scotchman as a Hollywood pretty boy. I threw out the one cop question Ramona’s story inspired: “In the fall of ‘46 someone was throwing dead cats into cemeteries in Hollywood. Was that you?”

“Yes. I was so jealous of her then, and I just wanted Georgie to know I still cared. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Go upstairs, Ramona. Leave me alone.”

I heard soft footfalls moving out of the room, then sobs, then nothing. I thought about the family’s united front to save Ramona, how arresting her would blow my police career: charges of withholding evidence, obstruction of justice. Sprague money would keep her out of the gas chamber, she’d get eaten alive at Atascadero or a women’s prison until the lupus got her, Martha would be ravaged, and Emmett and Madeleine would still have each other—withholding/obstruction beefs against them would be too second-hand to prosecute on. If I took Ramona in I was shot to shit as a policeman; if I let her go I was finished as a man, and in either case Emmett and Madeleine would survive—together.

So the patented Bucky Bleichert advance, stymied and stalemated, sat still in a big plush room full of ancestor icons. I looked through the packing crates on the floor—the Sprague getaway if the City Council got uppity—and saw the cheap cocktail dresses and the sketch pad covered with women’s faces, no doubt Martha sketching alter egos to plaster over ads huckstering toothpaste and cosmetics and cornflakes. Maybe she could design an advertising campaign to spring Ramona from Tehachapi. Maybe without torturer Mommy she wouldn’t have the guts to work anymore.

I left the manse and killed time making rounds of old haunts. I checked out the rest home—my father didn’t recognize me, but looked full of malicious spunk. Lincoln Heights was rife with new houses—prefab pads waiting for tenants—” No Down Payment” for GIs. The Eagle Rock Legion Hall still had a sign ballyhooing Friday night boxing, and my Central Division beat was still winos, rag suckers and Jesus shriekers. At twilight, I gave in: one last shot at the brass girl before I took her mommy down; one last chance to ask her why she was still playing Dahlia when she knew I’d never touch her again.

I drove to the 8th Street bar strip, parked at the corner of Irolo and waited with an eye on the Zimba Room entrance. I was hoping that the valise I’d seen Madeleine carrying in the morning didn’t mean a trip somewhere; I was hoping her Dahlia prowl of two nights ago wasn’t a one-shot deal.

I sat there eyeballing foot traffic: servicemen, civilian boozehounds, neighborhood squares going in and out of the hash house next door. I thought of packing it in, then got frightened of the next stop—Ramona—and stuck. Just past midnight Madeleine’s Packard pulled up. She got out—carrying her valise, looking like herself, not Elizabeth Short.

Startled, I watched her walk into the restaurant. Fifteen minutes passed slowly. Then she sashayed out, Black Dahlia to the nines. She tossed her valise in the Packard’s backseat and hit the Zimba Room.

I gave her a minute’s slack, then went over and peered in the doorway. The bar was serving a skeleton crew of army brass; the zebra-striped booths were empty. Madeleine was drinking by herself. Two soldiers were primping at stools down from her, getting ready to make the big move. They swooped a half second apart. The dump was too deserted for me to hold surveillance in; I retreated to the car.

Madeleine and a first lieutenant in summer dress khakis walked out an hour or so later. Per her old MO, they got in the Packard and headed around the corner to the 9th and Irolo auto court. I was right behind them.

Madeleine parked and walked to the manager’s hut for the key; the soldier waited by the door of room twelve. I thought of frustration: KMPC on loud, venetian blinds down to the sill. Then Madeleine left the office, called to the lieutenant and pointed across the courtyard to a different unit. He shrugged and went over; Madeleine joined him and opened the door. The light went on and off inside.

I gave them ten minutes, then moved to the bungalow, resigned to big band standards and darkness. Moans were coming from inside, unaccompanied by music. I saw that the one window was open two feet or so, dried paint on the ru

Heavier moans, bed springs creaking, male grunts. Her love sounds reaching fever pitch—stagy, more soprano than when she was with me. The soldier groaning hard, all noise subsiding, then Madeleine, speaking with a feigned accent:

“I wish there was a radio. Back home all the motels had them. They were bolted down and you had to put dimes in, but at least there was music.”

The soldier, trying to catch his breath: “I heard Boston’s a nice town.”

I placed Madeleine’s fake voice then: New England blue collar, the way Betty Short was supposed to speak. “Medford’s not nice, not nice at all. I had one lousy job after another. Waitress, candy girl at a theater, file clerk at a factory. That was why I came to California to seek my fortune. Because Medford was so awful.”

Madeleine’s “A’s” were getting broader and broader; she sounded like a Boston guttersnipe. The man said, “You came out here during the war?”

“Uh-huh. I got a job at the Camp Cooke PX. This soldier beat me up, and this rich man, this award-wi

“That’s the kind of dad to have. My dad bought me a bicycle once, and he gave me a couple of bucks toward a soap box derby racer. But he never bought me any Packards, that’s for damn sure. You’ve got yourself a real sugar daddy, Betty.”

I knelt down lower and peered through the window crack; all I could see were dark shapes on a bed in the middle of the room. Madeleine/Betty said, “Sometimes my stepdaddy doesn’t like my boyfriends. He never makes a fuss, because he’s not my real daddy and I let him give me backrubs. There was this one boy, a policeman. My stepdaddy said he was wishywashy with a mean streak. I didn’t believe him, because the boy was big and strong, and he had these cute buck teeth. He tried to hurt me, but Daddy settled his hash. Daddy knows how to deal with weak men who suck around money and try to hurt nice girls. He was a big hero in the First World War and the policeman was a draft dodger.”

Madeleine’s accent was slipping, moving into another voice, low and guttural. I braced myself for more verbal lashing; the soldier said, “Draft dodgers should either be deported to Russia or shot. No, shooting’s too merciful. Hanged by the you know what, that’s more like it.”

Madeleine, a vibrato rasp, a perfect Mexican accent: “An axe ees better, no? The policeman have a partner. He tie up some loose ends for me—some notes I should not ‘ave lef’ for a not so nice girl. The partner beat up my stepdaddy an’ run away to May-hee-co. I draw pictures of a face to be and buy cheap dress. I hire a detective to find him, an’ I make a pageant. I go down to Ensenada in dees-guise, I wear cheap dress, preten’ to be beggar and knock on hees door. ‘Gringo, gringo, I need money.’ He turn hees back, I grab axe an’ chop him down. I take money he steal from stepdaddy. Seventy-one thousan’ dollar I bring back home.”

The soldier jabbered, “Look, is this some kind of joke?” I pulled out my .38 and cocked the hammer. Madeleine as Milt Dolphine’s “rich Mex woman” slipped into Spanish, a streak of raspy obscenities. I aimed through the window crack; the light went on inside; lover boy thrashing himself into his uniform spoiled my shot at the killer. I saw Lee in a sand pit, worms crawling out of his eyes.